TELEVISION—New episodes this week from:

• Alphas (season finale),
• Doctor Who (season finale),
• Fringe,
• A Gifted Man,
• Haven (season finale),
• The Secret Circle,
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars,
• Supernatural,
• Terra Nova (series premiere),
• The Vampire Diaries.

Guest stars this week include Julie Benz and Brian Kerwin on A Gifted Man.

Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (regular or alphabetical). For sci-fi/fantasy movies on TV this week go to movie listings. Read More...

George Lucas has been proved right once again: even when he's meddled with his films in ways provocative enough to outrage purists, Star Wars fans are still devoted enough to the engrossing story of Anakin and Luke Skywalker that they'll line up in droves to buy the latest version.

Despite plaintive calls for a boycott from hundreds of fans claiming that Lucas had ruined a pivotal scene in part 6 of the series, Return of the Jedi, the Complete Saga on Blu-ray broke global sales records with 1 million units sold (including 515,000 units sold in North America in its first week alone) and $84 million racked up, propelling it to the giddy position of bestselling catalog Blu-ray Disc of all time.

Why the surge of excitement for this particular box set? It's not just the completist's salivation for a 9-disc set with 40 hours of extras--it's really about the six films themselves. For once fans can agree with a PR flack's press-release double-speak: "Star Wars is a franchise with universal stories that resonates as much today as it did 30 years ago," said Mary Daily, marketing chief at Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. "With the Blu-ray, audiences can go deeper into the mythology than ever before and reconnect with everything they love about the Saga in the best possible quality."

"Once again our fans' enthusiasm to celebrate Stars Wars continues to amaze us," said Kayleen Walters, Lucasfilm's head of marketing. "Our goal was to deliver a premium product that they could enjoy with their family and friends and we are thrilled that they are enjoying it as much as we hoped they would."

And if you're still upset about the Big No, just get ready to hit your mute button when Palpatine starts going to town on Luke in Episode VI, and everything will sort of be okay. The irony is that those of us who remember the original trilogy as they were first released in theaters are literally a dying breed: when it comes to the next generation, Lucas's revisionist versions are the only Star Wars they know, and they love it just as much as we do.

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So far Alloy Entertainment's steamy youth-oriented dramas--notably Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and The Secret Circle--have been printing money mainly for spunky second-tier networks like The CW and ABC Family. But the big-league, relatively older-skewing ABC has now gotten into the act, ordering a new drama series pilot from Alloy about an apartment building full of residents who've all sold their souls to the Big Red Guy.

The new project is an adaptation of 666 Park Avenue, the debut novel from Gabriella Pierce (a sequel, Dark Glamour, just came out last month). The setting of the drama is an apartment building on New York City's Upper East Side of New York City where the residents have all made deals with the Devil to have their desires fulfilled.

The current conception for the series may involve minor modification of the book's premise, but the script is still being developed (by David Wilcox, who's written for Fringe and Law & Order). Alloy's Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo, both fresh from the just-canceled ABC Family series The Nine Lives of Chloe King, will executive produce.

Strangely enough, even in a city where 13th floors are superstitiously avoided there actually is a 666 Park Avenue--but it's not residential. According to Google Maps it's one of the many of locations for HQ Global Workplaces, one of those honeycombs of rentable offices and meeting rooms for startup businesses. And isn't a warren of corporate offices a much more likely setting for wholesale trafficking in human souls?

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With the roaring success of the Doctor Who Christmas specials--"The End of Time: Part 1" and "A Christmas Carol" both garnering an average of about 10.4 million viewers on Christmas Day, plus considerable streaming and home video action--the annual special has come to be a much-anticipated lynchpin in any season of Doctor Who despite the opportunity for the Doctor to be more frivolous than ever, a tradition dating back to the very first Doctor and the first ever episode broadcast on December 25 itself.

And it's hard to disagree with head writer Steven Moffat that Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor, is particularly well suited to the role of Christmas clown."Of all the Doctors, Matt Smith's the one that was born for this time of year," said Moffat. "So it's the best news possible that he's heading back down the chimney."

"The Doctor at Christmas--nothing is more fun to write," Moffat said. "Maybe because it's so his kind of day--everything's bright and shiny, everybody's having a laugh, and nobody minds if you wear a really stupid hat."

The 2009 special was a major event, beginning the process of David Tennant's angst-laden exit from the show, and last year's story was still epic in scope despite its focus on untwisting the life of a single, Scrooge-like man; but this year's installment, as yet entitled, promises to be a bit more intimate as it focuses on a magical and mysterious adventure with a young widow and her two children against the recurring Who backdrop of World War II. Read More...